It is truly touching the way First Lady Laura Bush cares about the people of Burma and is using her officiousness (oops…I think that may be the wrong word…or is it?) to bring attention to the admittedly horrible situation there. There are very few people in the world that would not sympathize with or become outraged when monks are beaten and killed because they protested high gas prices.
Wait a minute…they were protesting high gas prices? Gas? Hmmm…what does that tell us? As Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman has written, Chevron is a major player in that country’s destabilization because the gas that travels in its pipeline supports the military junta. Why, when there is trouble around the world a US oil company is usually behind it? And isn’t it amazing that a former member of Chevron’s board is our Secretary of State and a former Unocal employee is now president of Afghanistan? In my opinion oil based diplomacy is centered on destruction and tyranny and nothing positive has ever come from it.
I understand Laura’s concern for Burma and its brutal oppression under the military junta. I have those same concerns. However, a recent article in WaPo extolling Laura’s deep humanitarian concern mentions that she has visited 68 countries in her tenure as First Lady. I wonder if she has been to Iraq? I wonder if she has visited the millions of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Jordan and Syria who have been forced from their country by her husband’s tragic policies?
I wonder if Laura has read the most recent studies that say over a million Iraqis have been killed since her husband’s “shocking and awful” on March 20. 2003? Does she feel the same compassion and concern for a country that has been plunged into violence and chaos by the person who sleeps (and very well by his own admission) right next to her every night?
Does Laura know that her husband’s hired guns in Iraq, Blackwater (and the rest) gun down Iraqis just because they can? Presidential Medal of Honor recipient, Jerry Bremer gave mercenary killers immunity when he was head of the Coalition Provisional Authority—-which was just really a military junta that morphed into a puppet government “led” by men put in place by BushCo and are kept in place as long as they tow the line that murders and displaces their brothers and sisters.
Doesn’t Laura know that her husband has authorized the torture of other human beings? Even though such inhumane acts such as water-boarding, sexual humiliation, desecration of religious symbols, extremes of noise and temperature are called “enhanced interrogation techniques” in our Orwellian BushSpeak age, it is torture no matter which way one strangles or manipulates the language. Just because the people being tortured are not red-robed monks, Laura, they are still people.
Hello, Laura: The people of New Orleans still don’t have homes to return to and our streets are filled with the homeless, sick, and hopeless. Families can’t afford insurance for their children and are declaring bankruptcy or losing their homes while Laura’s spouse vetoes their hope. Our jobs are going overseas to be performed by virtual slaves so Wal Mart can keep its shelves stocked. As a last resort, our children join the military to be misused because most people can’t afford the exorbitant costs of college or trade schools and unions have been busted under such “free” trade agreements as NAFTA/CAFTA. Laura’s husband has been good for his base, the “haves and have mores,” but the rest of us are becoming the “haves less.”
And I wonder if Laura knows or cares about the thousands of families here in the USA have been destroyed because of the Mister’s pre-emptive war for profit.
Laura is probably aware of all of these things, but I doubt if she cares, or she would be calling the United Nations to sanction America for its terrible deeds in Iraq and Afghanistan and here in the “Homeland.” Instead of holding conferences on the unspeakable situation in Burma, she would be marching with us on the streets to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and calling for the impeachment of her callously incompetent husband.
Everyone in the world deserves security and peace. Not just the people who the USA deem worthy of security. The hypocrisy of our system and the people who profess a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is stunning and sickening.
We cannot with any shred of decency or any pretense to moral superiority try and pluck the speck out of our neighbor’s eye when we look at the world through eyes that are blinded to our own abject failures and crimes.
Buy some eyewash, Laura.
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